Authorities in Long Island, New York, publicly stated that social media posts claiming explosives were found in a car near a rally planned by former President Donald Trump in New York are false.
The false reports of an explosive began circulating hours before the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign event at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale.
This incident comes just days after Trump was apparently the target of a second possible assassination attempt at his Florida golf club last Sunday (15), when Secret Service agents shot at a man who had a rifle and was hiding among the bushes along the perimeter of the Trump International Golf Club.
Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said police interrogated and detained a person who “may have trained a bomb detection dog” near the rally site and “falsely reported that explosives were found.”
The allegations were then widely shared on X, formerly Twitter, by a number of prominent accounts, including that of the company’s owner, Elon Musk, who has nearly 200 million followers.
The rally is Trump’s first in Long Island, a suburban area east of New York City, since 2017. The campaign event is scheduled for 7 p.m. this Wednesday (18).
In 2020, President Joe Biden defeated Trump by a margin of approximately 4% in Long Island, surpassing him in Nassau County by about 60,000 votes, although Trump won the neighboring Suffolk County by more than 200 votes.
Source: AP